1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a portable terminal capable of inputting at least the text, an information inputting method, a dictionary retrieving method and apparatus, a medium which allows an information processing apparatus to carry out the information inputting method and the dictionary retrieving method, and to a medium for providing the portable terminal and the dictionary retrieving apparatus with the dictionary information.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, portable terminals have made remarkable progress and, as typical of these portable terminals, a portable telephone set, a PHS (portable handyphone system) terminal or portable E-mail forming devices, are being marketed in large quantities. In particular, the portable terminals and the PHS terminals have come to possess not only the function of making a call in speech as usual but also the function of transmitting/receiving E-mails as well as the function as a terminal for receiving a variety of services. So these terminals are expected to have more diversified functions as a mainstream of portable terminals.
Meanwhile, the portable terminals, such as portable telephone sets or PHS terminals, are required to be small-sized and lightweight. Therefore, it is difficult to add new buttons to these portable terminals. For this reason, the conventional practice has been to allocate plural functions to ten keys of from 0 key to 9 key and to a small number of other keys and to use combinations of these keys to effect character inputting at the time of preparation of E-mails, to select various services furnished or to input the information corresponding to these services. For example, not only the figures from 0 to 9 but also Japanese hiragana characters of “ (uttered as “a⇄)-row, the first hiragana row”, “ (uttered as “ka”)-row, the second hiragana row”, “ (uttered as “sa”)-row, the third hiragana row” and so forth and alphabetical letters such as ABC, DEF, GHI and so forth are allocated to the ten keys, such that messages of E-mails can be created by selecting these letters or characters. As a specified example, if characters “ (uttered as “a, i, u, e and o”)” of the “ (uttered as “a”)-row, the first hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [1], characters “ (uttered as “ka, ki, ku, ke and ko”)” of the “ (uttered as “ka”)-row, the second hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [2], characters “ (uttered as “sa, shi, su, se and so”)” of the “ (uttered as “sa”)-row, the third hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [3], characters “ (uttered as “ta, chi, tsu, te and to”)” of the “ (uttered as “ta”)-row, the fourth hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [4], characters “ (uttered as “na, ni, nu, ne and no”)” of the “ (uttered as “na”)-row, the fifth hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [5], characters “ (uttered as “ha, hi, hu, he and ho”)” of the “ (uttered as “ha”)-row, the sixth hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [6], characters “ (uttered as “ma, mi, mu, me and mo”)” of the “ (uttered as “ma”)-row, the seventh hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [7], characters “ (uttered as “ya, yu, and yo”)” of the “ (uttered as “ya”)-row, the eighth hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [8], characters “ (uttered as “ra, ri, ru, re and ro”)” of the “ (uttered as “ra”)-row, the nineth hiragana row” are sequentially allocated to a key [9] and characters “ (uttered as “wa, wo, and nn”)” of the “ (uttered as “wa”)-row, the tenth hiragana row” are allocated to a key [0 ], and characters  (hello; uttered as “konnichiwa”)”, for example, is to be input, the key [2], to which the “ (uttered as “ka”)-row, the second hiragana row” is allocated, is thrust e.g., five times to select and finalize the character “ (uttered as “ko”)”, the key [0], to which “ (uttered as “wa, wo, and nn”)” are allocated, is thrust e.g., thrice to select and finalize the character “ (uttered as “nn”)”, the key [5], to which the “ (uttered as “na”)-row, the fifth hiragana row” is allocated, is thrust e.g. twice to select and finalize the character “ (uttered as “ni”)” and so forth, this sequence of operations being carried out repeatedly. When it is desired to convert hiragana characters into kanji characters, kana-kanji conversion (conversion from Japanese kana characters into Chinese kanji characters) is additionally required.
The inputting with e.g., ten keys is extremely troublesome and is not suited for a case wherein the number of input characters is large or wherein Chinese kanji characters are to be input. For this reason, a technique which allows for easier inputting is desired. The above is not limited to portable terminals or to PHS terminals but applies to all sorts of portable terminals suffering from limitations as to the number of keys.